I am reading a book called A Diary of The Lady: my first year as editor - it's by Rachel Johnson (sister of politician Boris) and it's her diary of the first year she spent as editor of The Lady.
The Lady is a very old-fashioned weekly magazine. For years and years it was bought mostly for the classified ads, as this was where you went to find your nanny, housekeeper, au pair, mother's help, etc if you were of the class that has such things. (And of course it was also where you went if you were looking for a job of this kind). The Middletons themselves, William and Kate, advertised for their housekeeper in these august columns. The rest of the magazine was made up of 'genteel' articles about things like country customs, innocuous theatre productions, rather dull travel articles, and something called The Ladygram. The Lady had been owned and run by the same aristocratic family for generations. By the time Rachel was headhunted for the job (she is an established journalist and author) the magazine was losing money and readers hand over fist - the average age of its readers was 78.
The book describes her attempts to drag it, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.
Rachel Johnson is the kind of person that i would probably loathe if I met her - she's posh, rich, has the hide of a rhinoceros and the confidence of her class. I have to say, however, that i am finding this book both interesting and hilarious. Everything Rachel tries to do at The Lady (which is housed in a building in Covent Garden, London, of which the freehold (worth billions) is still owned by the Budworths (who own the magazine) - the upper floors, all 16 rooms of them, are still (or were when the book was written) occupied by Uncle Tom, who does absolutely nothing. The Lady's staff consists of numerous people who have been there forever and mostly also do very little.
Rachel brings in all her upper class journo friends to write new copy - almost all of which is strongly resisted by the Budworth matriarch, who resides in some ancestral pile in the country and communicates only by letter ('I want this woman sacked immediately') or by shouting down the phone. Rachel documents the events of every day - the weird things that people send in, the constant complaints from older readers about how she is ruining the magazine, the numerous events she attends to try to raise The Lady's profile - and the many mistakes she makes in her attempts to up the sales figures.
It's very easy to read, and provided you can put up with all the 'then I had lunch at The Ivy with X' stuff, it really is very entertaining.
During the course of the year, a fly-on-the-wall documentary was made by a TV company about Rachel's arrival and her effect on the entrenched establishment. I did see this programme, and very funny it was, so it is also interesting to hear about it from the other side - what Rachel thought at the time, what the managing director (a Budworth son who would rather be flying helicopters) said about it (often barely printable), etc.
If you are looking for a light read that will tell you a lot about the English aristocracy - and indeed about middle class English ladies of a certain type - I recommend this book.
